The USFWS has proposed new regulations restricting the killing of predators (wolves and grizzlies) in Alaska on national wildlife refuges. See the details of the proposals at https://www.fws.gov/alaska/nwr/pdf/12_23_2015_Draft%20EA%20AK%20Rule.pdf
Republicans in Congress oppose these regulations protecting Alaskan predators and have taken steps to prevent their implementation including “by attaching riders to legislation moving through Congress such as the House Appropriations bill, H.R. 5538 with “provisions to bar FWS’s rule and withdraw the National Park Service’s (NPS) authority to implement similar protections for iconic carnivores on Alaska national preserves. The Senate Interior appropriations bill, S. 3068, also includes a rider which would stop the FWS rule from moving forward. The House amended version of the energy bill, S. 2012, which is currently being conferenced with the Senate version, contains a similar rider. Thus it is likely that the Trump Administration will reverse this attempt to protect predators when it takes control. Organizations such as the Defenders of Wildlife support the USFWS regulations—see their coverage at https://www.defenders.org/publications/oppose-attacks-on-the-alaska-national-wildlife-refuge-rule-defenders.pdf
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The Defenders of Wildlife published an analysis in 2011 of attempts to weaken the Endangered Species Act by Republicans. The proposals include the following: (1) end protection of gray wolves; (2) end attempts at recovery of Mexican wolves; (3) ease rules protecting for the endangered Delta smelt, Chinook salmon, steelhead and green sturgeon in California’s Bay-Delta region; (4) make it so that bluefin tuna cannot be treated as endangered or threatened species; (5) prohibit the USFWS from protecting “sand dune lizards” and “Lesser prairie chickens.” While none of these measures succeeded during the Obama Administration, these and similar measures are likely to be a high priority for the Trump Administration. Read the full report at
http://www.defenders.org/sites/default/files/publications/assault_on_wildlife_the_endangered_species_act_under_attack.pdf Audubon Magazine columnist Ted Williams in article titled “Should Wolves Stay Protected under the Endangered Species Act?” described the dilemma of the USFWS with respect to wolves. Williams depicts the USFWS as pursuing an intelligent set of wolf policies that seek to mediate between westerners who want to remove all protections from wolves and groups such as the Center for Biological Diversity which, in Williams’ view, wrongly want to litigate any attempts on the part of USFWS to compromise with wolf opponents. From Williams’ perspective, these avid wolf supporters are providing fuel for wolf haters and threatening the Endangered Species Act. Williams quotes a National Parks biologist as saying that “Playing politics with the Endangered Species Act is not just okay – it’s essential.” See his argument at http://e360.yale.edu/feature/should_wolves_stay_protected_under_endangered_species_act/2674/
The Center for Biological Diversity published an article titled “Saving the Gray Wolf” that articulates and defends their litigations concerning wolves. They describe the 2011 rider to “must pass” budget legislation that “stripped Endangered Species Act protections from wolves in all of Montana and Idaho, the eastern third of Washington and Oregon, and a small portion of northern Utah” and cite this as “an unprecedented action that, for the first time in the history of the Act, removed a species from the endangered list by political fiat instead of science.” They also critique the 2013 proposal by the Obama Administration “to strip Endangered Species Act protections from gray wolves across the rest of the lower 48 states outside the Southwest, where the Mexican gray wolf was struggling to survive….” This change is based on two premises: that gray wolves are now established in certain states in the west and it is not the duty nor does the USFWS with its limited resources have the ability to reestablish wolves across the nation. I discuss these issues in my book, Wildlife Politics in detail. See the Center for Biological Diversity’s full statement at http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/gray_wolves/
In my book Wildlife Politics, I have an entire chapter devoted to Implementation of Wildlife Conservation policies—it is for the most part, a discouraging chapter. However, there are some positive signs due to technological advances in certain areas. Andrew Revkin’s Sept. 2016 report on new technology to detect illegal fishing in protected areas is a notable example. He makes the point that this new technology can have a huge impact on implementation of protections—without it, marine protected areas (mpas) are often “paper parks” but now required it is required that “Automatic Identification System technology installed on nearly all substantial commercial vessels as a safety and tracking tool.” The identification system can be turned off but turning it off but doing that, says Revkin, can alert users of the system and its users to illegal activity. Before this technology, tracking and proving illegal fishing took required incredibly difficult and intensive work. Revkin notes that other steps can be taken to increase the efficacy of the system such as “requirements by insurers to have them [the detection systems] turned on.” Revkin’s article is available at http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/09/15/how-digital-tracking-of-rogue-fishing-can-safeguard-vast-ocean-reserves/?emc=edit_tnt_20160915&nlid=10365419&tntemail0=y
A research article discussing the technology and a case study of it use by Keith Urbina in the Feb. 16, 2016 New York Times Magazine is available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/magazine/palau-vs-the-poachers.html Professor Holly Doremus has written several important works that have described the role of science in making decisions about endangered species. Her book with Dan Tarlock titled Water War in the Klamath Basin: Macho Law, Combat Biology, and Dirty Politics” is essential reading for the role of science. Her 2004 article “The purposes, effects, and future of the Endangered Species Act’s Best Available Science Mandate.” Environmental Law, 34, 397-450 makes several important points about the role of science in the implementation of the Endangered Species Act. I draw on her insights in my chapter on politics and endangered species in my Wildlife Politics book. One point that she makes in the article is that she doesn’t think academic researchers will play much of a role in “important policy decisions” because they will not want to divert time from their academic role especially in the short term such as for biological opinions. However, in my book, I study in detail some biological opinions and find that the UFWS is often able to get top experts in the field to do reviews. Indeed, I show that in some cases, the universe of relevant researchers is very small. However, I also show that these researchers often disagree, thus demonstrating one of the limitations of science’s role. I also discuss how Federal judges play a key role in determining which scientists to believe since both plaintiffs and defendants have scientists backing their arguments. I discuss how modern scientific assessments of dangers are now based on complex models which have several parameters that have to be determined by scientists that can determine the nature of the recommendations and I illustrate with cases on how scientists often disagree on these parameters—another limiting factor on the role of science. Doremus makes a distinction between questions that science can answer and those that must be determined by politics and policymakers. However, the line is not so clear. She uses the issue of whether “hatchery salmon” should be included in determining whether the fish should be listed. She argues that this is a question that cannot be determined by science. However, following this line of argument, should the captive populations of tigers (both those in worldwide zoos and those being “farmed” in China) and lions be used to justify the taking of wild tigers and lions? It seems to me that the distinction between wild and captive populations is clear—it is not a question that requires complex scientific research but it is not a subjective issue that politicians, not scientists, must make??
The extraordinary difficulty of implementing the Endangered Species Act is well depicted in George Wilhere’s article “Three Paradoxes of Habitat Conservation Plans. Environmental Management (2009) 44:1089–1098. As Wilhere shows, in order for landowners to want to participate in wildlife conservation programs such as Candidate Conservation Agreements with Assurances (CCAAs), they must have financial incentives to do so. But Wilhere points out the following: “CCAAs are viewed by landowners as a means of proactively dealing with potential government regulations that cloud the future of their financial objectives. He goes on to state that a landowner wouldn’t find CCAAs attractive if “he is not worried about future listings.” Consequently, most landowners will not seriously consider CCAAs until their financial objectives appear to be threatened. He says that “CCAAs are needed to avert the listing of species, but federal listings are needed to elicit CCAAs” (p. 1090-1091). Thus the threat of listing is akin to the use of an atomic bomb: those in possession don’t want to use the bomb but in order to have its intended effects, the threat to use must be perceived as credible which only occurs if it is used. The recent agreement to protect the sage grouse so that it would avoid listing under the ESA may be regarded as a primary example of the effective use of the listing threat. In my chapter on the Endangered Species Act in my book, Wildlife Politics, I give detailed examples of HCPs and CCAAs but the point that stands out is that, though theoretically, these agreements could be revised to take into account changes in the threats to species, in reality, the political difficulty and cost to reach complex agreements like these makes it all but virtually impossible to make changes. Moreover, with the changeover to the Trump Administration, even if the ESA law were kept intact (it is likely to be very much weakened if it survives at all), the threat of its use would be much diminished under the new Administration. Wilhere makes suggestions on how to revise the ESA to avoid these paradoxes but he acknowledges that the reauthorization of the ESA would be dependent on political compromises yet these compromises have proven to be impossible for some 24 years!
An (2010-11) article by Ruhl and Fischmann “Adaptive Management in the Courts.” Minnesota Law Review, 95, 424-484, analyzes the treatment of the concept of adaptive management by courts. A key point they make is that adaptive management is often loosely interpreted as “learning by doing” without any specific substantive criteria to determine outcomes. They label this very loose “process-oriented” adaptive management as “a-m/lite,” “a watered-down version of the theory that resembles ad hoc contingency planning more than it does planned "learning while doing” (p. 426). Adaptive management has been employed to deal with the problem that we often lack much information on factors that will preserve a threatened species and thus must employ some trial and error to find out. However, Ruhl and Fischmann point out that this flexibility and so-called a-m/lite is used to avoid making hard decisions due to politics. They illustrate this point with a vague plan for reducing the winter elk population in the National Elk Refuge. They say that the vagueness of this “adaptive plan” dodge a controversial issue because of strong political support for feeding the elk. They conclude by arguing for adaptive management plans that “(1) clearly articulate measurable goals, (2) identify testable hypotheses (or some other method of structured learning from conceptual models), and (3) state exactly what criteria should apply in evaluating the management experiments.” (p. 482).
Prioritization of Species for Protection: Science and Politics? Callie Carswell published an Sept. 5 High Country News article titled The Fish and Wildlife Service’s endangered species triage https://www.hcn.org/issues/48.15/the-fish-and-wildlife-services-endangered-species-triage
As described in the article, since its early years, UFWS has been unable to keep up with the number of petitions to protect species. Groups such as the Center for Biological Diversity have petitioned for hundreds of species at a time. USFWS in its discussion of its new prioritization scheme describes the problem from their perspective in the Federal Register at https://www.fws.gov/policy/library/2016/2016-17818.pdf as follows: “As a result of petitions to list a large number of species under the Act received between 2007 and 2012, our workload requires us to complete more than 500 status reviews and accompanying 12-month findings on those petitions…. This methodology is intended to allow us to address the outstanding workload of status reviews and accompanying 12-month findings strategically as our resources allow and to provide transparency to our partners and other stakeholders as to how we establish priorities within our workload into the future. The revised 5 priority levels are described as follows in a USFWS document at https://www.fws.gov/endangered/improving_esa/listing_workplan_prioritization_methodology.html 1: Highest Priority: Critically Imperiled – Species that appear to be critically imperiled and in need of immediate action. 2: Strong Data Available on Species’ Status – Species for which we have existing strong scientific data supporting a clear decision on status. 3: New Science Underway to Inform Key Uncertainties – Species for which important emerging science on their status is underway to answer key questions that may influence the petition finding; uncertainty about species’ status can be resolved in a reasonable timeframe. 4: Conservation Efforts in Development or Underway – Species for which proactive conservation efforts by states, landowners and stakeholders are underway or being developed. The conservation efforts should be organized and likely to reduce threats to the species. Conservation efforts should be developed or in place within a reasonable timeframe to be considered for placement in this bin. 5: Limited Data Currently Available – Species for which there is little information on status and threats available to inform a petition finding. Carswell cites critiques of the new system by staff of the Center for Biological Diversity such as that the system favors mammals and birds because they are more studied. However, she also cites a staff person at the Defenders of Wildlife as acknowledging that “there will always be some species that come out ahead.” Comments on the new system in the Federal Register included questions on how a differentiation between categories (e.g., 1&2) would be made: “One commenter noted that Bin 1 appears to suppose strong data are available to define ‘critically imperiled’’ and ‘‘severe threats,’’ meaning there is significant overlap between Bins 1 and 2. The commenter stated that the final methodology needs to make clear the distinction between placing species in Bin 1 or Bin 2.” From my viewpoint, a key point is how the new system affects the “politics” of negotiation between USFWS and organizations like CBD. Will it make it more difficult for CBD to force deals? I am not clear on this point. Does anyone else have insights? Of course, the situation could change radically soon with the advent of the Trump Administration in which the protections under the Endangered Species Act will be watered down and the need for triage may seem irrelevant. Since the Trump Administration is not likely to value preserving any species as more important than economic interests (Query: during the campaign, I did not hear about Trump’s policies concerning endangered species at all—is that correct?) Based on Trump’s “philosophy,” my assumption is that restrictions based on preserving endangered species would be considered unnecessary “regulation” that should be eliminated as a burden on business and job production? Invasive species: What to do? An Sept. 5, 2016 article in the High Country News by Zack Coleman titled “Time to Make Peace with Invasive Species” ( discusses the issue of invasive species in the Sonoran desert. The immediate problem concerns invasive species buffelgrass which has been “crowding out” native species such as cactus. Though this case involves plant species rather than wildlife directly, it illustrates a debate between the “new” and traditional conservation camps over invasive species. How much emphasis, if any at all, should be spent to eliminate the invasive species? Stephen Jackson of the Department of the Interior’s Southwest Climate Science Center says that these species have become so pervasive that a return to “status quo ante” is impossible for them and that a “triage” approach needs to be used. Indeed, Coleman quotes Jackson as stating that “And then the more intensively we have to manage to maintain those ecosystems in a museum-piece-like context, it’s no longer a natural system; it’s an intensively managed system that’s aspiring to some putatively natural standard that has become an –anachronism.” This sounds similar to the positon of Emma Marris author of The Rambunctious Garden who has critiqued the attachment of traditional conservationists to “native species” and has argued that invasives can contribute to a greater biomass and perhaps substitute for the loss of native species. Although Jackson rejects the notion the invasives are inherently harmful, he agrees that is the case with respect to buffelgrass: “I don’t really see any value in it. Nothing that I or most other people value about the natural world is there in a buffelgrass-dominated ecosystem compared to the beautiful and diverse Sonoran Desert ecosystem. This is a novel ecosystem that in my view should not be embraced.” Jackson’s position in this case does not help to establish any general principle on when an invasive should be resisted. Coleman’s article is available at:
https://www.hcn.org/issues/48.15/time-to-make-peace-with-invasive-species |
During my research for the book, I noticed that there was no blog available for sharing informaton on wildlife conservation and thus I set up this blog to accomplish this purpose. Please share any informaticoncerning issues related to wildife policy and politics. I welcome feedback from users concerning this blog and website.
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